TV REVIEWS : ‘Family’ Secrets in an Adoption Mystery

Once you brush past the dreary domestic scenes that set up the plot’s flash point, “A Family of Strangers” turns into an absorbing adoption mystery (at 9 p.m. Sunday on CBS, Channels 2 and 8).

The mystery is the parenthood of a young researcher (Melissa Gilbert) who shockingly discovers that her folks aren’t her biological parents. The doting father who raised her (William Shatner) blurts out the truth about her adoption when she attempts to trace her family history in order to have life-saving brain surgery.

Gilbert effectively captures that odd moment of impact--the numbing sense of betrayal and loss of identity the woman feels. Writers Anna Sandor and William Gough know what it is like to discover you aren’t who you thought you were.

A workaholic researcher in her professional life, the woman tracks down her birth-mother (Patty Duke), whom she finds running a beauty parlor in a remote lakeside village in Canada. Initially into denial, the birth-mom peels away long-suppressed memories centered on a high school prom night nearly 30 years earlier.

The triggering device, pictures in her 1964 class yearbook, materialize under director Sheldon Larry in uneasy, dreamlike flashbacks that punctuate much of the production and distinguish it from most TV movies.